Rewritten Ending
by UtaHimeMari
Summary: Dawn describes life with a god.


_Notes: _Following the timeline in Summer Night Scars, a what-if where Dawn and Cyrus met as teenagers and became friends. Dawn's friendship turned out to be a changing influence, and Cyrus succeeded when he went to the Spear Pillar in this timeline. They have a lovely inside jokes about the rocks that can be found at Mt. Coronet.

It's strange, living with a god. And yet, it's really no different from how it was before. I train, I garden, I read, I go to the League when there's a challenger. And he does his own thing, quietly in his space, just like he did before. But now, he's not tinkering with machinery, he's tinkering with people's lives

And that's okay. I'm at peace with it. He's doing what he was always meant to, leading humanity to a brighter path. I'm proud of him.

It was a few months after that day when he told me he was leaving for a while. It was the firs ttime since then, but for once, I wasn't nervous.

"When will you be back?" I asked. Not long ago, it would have been "you're coming back, right?" But now there was no question. The opportunity to lose him had passed, and I no longer worried about it as a possibility.

"A few days." He brushed my hand, and I grabbed his. The freedom to touch him however and whenever I wanted was incredible. He smiled.

"Where are you going?"

Our fingers were entwining. "Somewhere. Everywhere and nowhere." He kissed my forehead. That still confused me on occasion, that he would do such a thing so casually. "I'll be back before you have a chance to miss me."

I nodded. I was not his keeper anymore, if I had ever been. Really, all this proved that my belief I'd once been his keeper was a delusion. In any case, I was not his keeper now. We were companions. Friends. Confidantes. Not equals, I thought. Not lovers, not in the literal sense, but close. There wasn't really a word for it.

And then with a squeeze of my hand, and a soft kiss, he was gone. I was left on my own again, but there was no fear now. No nagging suspicion that I ought to be watching him, no worry that he was off doing things I'd sworn to stop. I'd failt that, of course, and laughably, there was no reason to worry now, /because/ I had failed.  
>I was smiling the next three days. It was strange. I've always been a bright person, but this weightlessness, this was new. It was silly, but I didn't care. I was singularly loved by God himself, and if that was not something to be unconditionally happy about, then nothing was!<p>

I planted lillies in the front garden, next to the mailbox. I baked a cake and practiced making icing roses for it. I breezed through two challenges at the League.  
>The fourth day after he'd left, I was sitting on the porch swing, stretched out with a magazine, and a glass of lemonade in hand. I could not remember being so relaxed in my adult life. This could last forever - not that I didn't miss him, but there was peace. I was at peace, and time meant nothing, because he was its master.<p>

"Dawn."

I turned, smiling lazily over my shoulder at him. "Welcome home." Perhaps that was the wrong word, but it didn't matter. Very little mattered, really.

He stopped, standing over me, while I tipped my head back to keep smiling up at him. "I brought you something."

"Hm? You didn't have to do that."

"It's not a big deal. It's only a rock."

I choked a little. On laughter or tears or both, I couldn't tell.

"A very shiny rock."

I scrambled out of the swing, barely managing to set my lemonade down safely. "Cyrus, I don't, I-w-"

And then he was kissing me, and to hell with my protests, which were gone the second his lips met mine anyways.

"Yes," I said, but I don't think I said it out loud. Did I need to? But he knew, he must have known the answer was yes. Of course the answer was yes. We were a team. We were /the/ team. He was God, but he would not have been without me. He was the sun, but without an earth to shine on, he would be nothing.

I thought briefly that it was silly, knowing that, to do it in such a normal way. Such a human way. To get married...My brain wondered what it really mattered, but my heart just wanted it, and damned be the logic. Even as a god, he was more human than he had been before. It made no sense ,and all of the sense, and I couldn't help laughing at what I was saying yes to. A lifetime of making no sense, and too much sense, of confusion, and peace. A lifetime of a love strong enough to rewrite the ending.


End file.
